


As They Slept

by Tjerra14



Series: Rifts [5]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Biscuit is back!, Character Death, Cullen/Inquisitor married, Dalish OC - Freeform, Demons, Elements of Horror, F/M, Fear Demons (Dragon Age), Fluff, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Inquisition Disbanded, Occasional swearing, Orlais (Dragon Age), Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition - Trespasser DLC, Sylvans, Tranquil Angst, wood noises
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:07:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23435914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tjerra14/pseuds/Tjerra14
Summary: Orlais, 9:44 Dragon.People vanish without a trace in the woods surrounding a half-forgotten village, its only trademarks being a patch of exotic flowers and a possibly sentient tree. When the rumours and whispered warnings shared on the nearby roads prove true and soldiers of the recently disbanded Inquisition disappear while accompanying the former Inquisitor on her way back to Skyhold, Imira Trevelyan finds herself caught up in one last mission.
Relationships: Cullen Rutherford/Female Trevelyan, Female Inquisitor/Cullen Rutherford, Female Mage Inquisitor & Cullen Rutherford
Series: Rifts [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1230794
Kudos: 3





	1. Prey

**Author's Note:**

> UPDATE 19/07/2020  
> A couple of days after posting the initial version of this chapter, I felt like there was something not quite right with it. I couldn't put my finger on it straight away, but eventually I decided to rewrite a part of it, both to bring up some points that will be brought up in the next chapters, too, and to do Elloris justice.
> 
> UPDATE 20/11/2020  
> I've not been working on my fics for a while due to personal reasons, or at least the progress was rather marginal so nothing really amounted to anything post-worthy. I've been getting into it again lately, however, and as a consequence, decided to restructure this fic a bit. Or, well, quite a lot.

Let the blade pass through the flesh,  
Let my blood touch the ground,  
Let my cries touch their hearts. Let mine be the last sacrifice.

_Andraste 7:12_

**Orlais, 9:44 Dragon**

He ran. 

It’d been a routine assignment, a routine mission. A routine sweep of the area, and even though the area changed each time he set out, each movement, each step stayed the same.

Left foot, right foot, tread lightly, stop, blur into the underbrush. Listen. _Watch._ Left foot, right foot, left foot hanging in the air, pause, avoid a dry branch, right foot, stop. Listen. Watch. Left foot…

Someone watched him. 

Some _thing_.

It was there, at the back of his mind, just close enough so that he could feel its presence, but not discern what it was. Just close enough so that he was aware. 

Right foot. Unsling the bow. Left foot. Pull an arrow from the quiver. Right foot. Nock it. Stop. 

He held his breath, listening. Fallen leaves rustled as a mouse startled by his presence scurried away. In a nearby tree, three blue tits debated if he posed a danger to them. Somewhere further away, a blackbird sang, almost drowning out the rhythmical chirping of a chiffchaff. 

The feeling intensified.

Left foot, right foot. Turn. Watch.

If it moved closer, it made no sound and stayed hidden. It didn’t disturb the wildlife. These woods were its home.

A hunter, he concluded.

Raise the bow.

Even experienced hunters could become the prey. He’d become used to fighting invisible foes, had learned to anticipate their moves and his survival was witness to arrows crossing paths that had been deemed safe mere seconds before.

Left foot. Breathe. 

The presence inched ever closer. Close enough.

Aim. Draw. Release.

The arrow never hit its mark. Wood creaked in muffled protest when he dropped the bow.

He ran.


	2. The Archer

The trouble had begun when the hills began to rise around them, about four days’ ride out of Halamshiral. The man they’d sent ahead to scout the woods didn’t report back, and the two soldiers that went to look for him the next morning failed to return as well.

After three days, they gathered potions and supplies to prepare a bigger search party, convinced there was something deadly waiting for them in those trees, until a trader passing through their camp told them he’d found Inquisition armour at the back of the inn in a nearby village. When they gave him the description of the missing persons, it turned out the original search party had turned their search somewhere else entirely and set out to on the road to Lydes two days ago. 

That left one man.

He’d been Orlesian, like the other two, and the others had been convinced he’d probably just deserted, too. Hubert secretly agreed.

With the Inquisition disbanded, they didn’t exactly have to fear repercussions anymore—even if their leadership still cared, who would be there to bring them to Skyhold? Who would judge them, and on what grounds? You couldn’t desert an army that theoretically did no longer exist.

Yet you could still desert the person that used to be the head of it all.

Their small group had agreed to be her escort on the way back to Skyhold, where they’d help to keep order until everyone had packed up and left, and under different circumstances Hubert wouldn’t have cared about desertions.

Normally, she wouldn’t have needed that large an escort, not with her magic and the Commander at her side, and a few soldiers more or less wouldn’t make a difference with the numbers still posted at the fortress.

But no matter how hard she tried to cover it up, they were all able to see it: she was vulnerable now, and the road to Skyhold was long and dangerous, and lead through a forest that potentially made people disappear.

So, he’d volunteered. If he didn’t find that damn Orlesian, at least he’d be able to have a good look at their surroundings and could do his part in protecting the Inquisitor.

No, not Inquisitor. Herald. No, Lady Trevelyan, no, _those days are gone_.

For someone who pretended not to care about titles, she corrected them often, as if disbanding the Inquisition had made her an entirely different person. _Serah Rutherford_ was what she wanted them to call her now, but he found it was too ordinary, didn’t do her justice, and they’d quickly gone back to call her what they knew her for: Inquisitor. In the end, she’d begrudgingly given in to their insistence, only occasionally mumbling in protest. Maybe even she had realised what they all still knew: no matter what had happened back at the Winter Palace, she was still their leader. Their Herald. Their Inquisitor.

Well, except maybe for those Orlesian sluggards who’d rather sit their arses down in some cosy home down in Val Firmin instead of doing their duty to the woman who’d seen to it they still had homes at all.

Hubert spat.

His saliva left a glistening wet spot on a root sticking out of the dried leaves the last winter had scattered over the forest ground.

Except it wasn’t a root.

Frowning, Hubert knelt to get a closer look. It was polished wood, ash by the looks of it, and as he pushed the leaves away, narrowed into a curve adorned with delicate floral motifs.

A bow.

And not just any bow, he mused, tracing the carvings with his thumb. They were exquisite, detailed enough that someone better versed in botany than him might’ve picked out individual species, but still so superficial they didn’t compromise the wood’s sturdiness. Beautiful, yet still practical.

He’d seen such a weapon before.

The first time had been in one of those Maker-forsaken villages at the edge of the Arbor Wilds, where Andraste’s song was torn apart by the wolves stalking the night. His unit had dealt with an especially vicious pack that had been terrorising the area for months, feral beasts with strangely glowing eyes, and as they waited for the captain to finish his talk with the village’s elder, a fight had erupted across the market square.

The night before, a small group of scouts had stopped at the village and drunk themselves into a rampage at the local inn. Even though they wore Inquisition colours, his captain had ordered them to stay away, and Hubert had gladly heeded that command, as he was not eager on the punishment those scouts would face should word of their behaviour reach the main force. And the grim look on his captain’s face ensured it would.

Yet that spilled ale, those shattered mugs and smashed chairs were nothing against the turmoil they’d started the next morning, and as they’d run to break it up, there it had been: an ornate bow, leaning against a backpack next to the splintered tavern door.

Hubert had expected its owner to be an elf, one of those Dalish that had joined recently, but certainly not the burly man with the unkempt beard and hair who held a scrawny village boy by the throat while bellowing something about dirty thieves even though he might have been the dirtiest person around.

He’d never asked what had happened to the scouts after they’d stopped them from rioting, and soon he’d almost forgotten about it.

The second time had been during their push on that elven temple hidden deeply in the Wilds. The fighting had been going on for days, and exhausted as he was, he’d lost his footing and tumbled down a hill straight into a hidden red templar encampment. They’d been as surprised as he had, and their surprise only had amplified when sudden arrows saved him from certain death.

Luckily for Hubert, Inquisition forces had been sneaking up onto the camp when he fell into it, and among the men who’d saved him was the burly one he remembered from that village, now with his hair tucked into a ponytail, the bow firmly in his hands.

The third time had been at the Winter Palace. The Inquisition had just been disbanded, they’d been allowed to go, and then there’d been the call: someone to accompany the Inquisitor on her way back to Skyhold, experienced fighters and trackers preferred.

Hubert had been among the first to volunteer, and one of the few to get chosen, and when he met up with the others, he only recognised the man with the closely cropped beard and neatly braided hair by the ornate bow slung to his back.

Even if they never exchanged many words, Hubert knew that man would never leave his weapon behind.

Not desertion, then.

He picked up the bow and stood, slinging it to his back. Then, he took out a small batch of throwing knives from the pockets on his belt. They wouldn’t do him much good if he couldn’t spot his foe before it attacked, but the familiar weight in his hands was comforting.

The leaves on the forest floor had been disturbed not far from the spot he’d found the bow in. It hadn’t rained for a while, but the twilight of the foliage had retained the humidity, and in the mud, he found half-dried boot prints leading away in a straight line.

The man had been running, Hubert concluded from the gaps between the individual prints, broken into a headless sprint judging by the depth of them and the broken branches sticking out accusatorily from the bushes lining his path.

He turned to scan the underbrush in the opposite direction. Whatever had caused the scout to run, must’ve come from there, as a panicked flight rarely followed a different plan than _away_ , and if it had been large and dangerous enough to scare a man like him, it must’ve left tracks.

There were none.

A bit further away, all but easily missed, Hubert spotted an arrow stuck in a birch. A single shot, a single trail and no other traces: seemingly the man had shot at and fled from nothing.

It didn’t make sense.

It looked like the reaction of a startled green boy, attacking an unexpected gust of wind, yet the green boys had been the first to leave after the disbanding. Everyone who’d stayed, everyone who’d volunteered, had been experienced, and often led and survived a life well before the Inquisition. They’d been poachers, thieves and smugglers, used to the hunt and the run and everything in between. Of course, some had been soldiers for long enough to bury their past misdeeds beneath necessities and orders and chains of command, but in truth, they had been fooling themselves. The Inquisitor’s escort had never been made up by subservience and immaculateness.

One of his comrades had once joked she seemed to prefer common criminals.

Hubert had emphatically protested the notion.

Now, travelling with her, he found she seemed to prefer commoners with special skill sets, and sometimes they turned out to have been criminals.

Except maybe for that Dalish woman, Elloris. Allegedly, she’d served in the Western Approach before she had been transferred to the Storm Coast, where she’d met the Inquisitor returning from Ostwick. There, she’d been the first to replace the lost guard, and she’d stayed to be the last. No one knew why she hadn’t left with the other guard members, among that first wave of soldiers that had been allowed to go. Or maybe they’d fled, afraid the Inquisitor would get them killed even though it was over.

There were stories.

None of them were true, of course.

The Inquisitor had never done anything to dispel the rumours, and in Hubert’s mind, there had been no need. She had the Commander at her side, a former templar, and if those stories would’ve had a shred of truth to them, he would’ve dealt with them, with her. The absence of the sunburst brand on her forehead denoted them as lies.

Ostwick had been a failed mission, a fight turned the wrong way like any other.

Bad luck.

Just like this assignment. He’d hoped to quickly finish his search and report back, preferably with good news. Hubert couldn’t quite decide what that good news would have been— _another desertion, Your Worship, blighted cowards,_ or _found his corpse, Your Worship, I killed the bastard who did it, but there could be more_? Something else than _there was nothing there_ , in any case.

The throwing knives loosely in his hand, he set out to follow the trail of footprints his comrade had left.


	3. Lycoris

The camp was quiet save for the crackling of the fireplace and the occasional snorting of a horse. It had been quiet for days. The laughter and conversation that had accompanied them out of Halamshiral and into the Plains had grown more sparsely with each mile they covered, each traveller they passed, and when they reached the hills, something had changed about their group.

Something had changed about the travellers, too.

In their eyes, fear reigned and spurred on the wordless pleas they regarded them with instead of greetings.

“It’s the colours,” Cullen said, turning in the saddle to watch a trader’s cart shrink with the distance. “They’ve come to expect us to solve their troubles.”

Their troubles seemed of no interest to the local lord. Their stories had people disappear.

They’d pitched camp just off a junction on the road they’d been following for two days then. Maybe that had been the first mistake, for it had made those rumours come true. A week had passed, and of the five soldiers they’d sent out, none had returned.

Imira sighed and tossed a twig into the campfire, watching the flames devouring it. Giving up on the soldiers would be an easy thing. Two of them had deserted for sure. They could decide the rest had followed suit, move on and finally change the road for Skyhold, for the comfort of her bed and a bath and Fluffles purring softly on her lap, and even though a part of her wished nothing more than to leave Orlais and the anxious traders’ stories behind, she couldn’t. Three people were missing, and she felt it was her fault. While Cullen had insisted they assembled an escort, disgruntled she’d sent her guard away almost immediately after disbanding, she hadn’t exactly protested the notion, and she knew he could’ve been swayed if she’d just tried enough.

And yet, there was a decision to be made. They couldn’t stay here indefinitely, waiting, while they were expected back at Skyhold. Sending out even more people wasn’t an option, either. What if the other travellers had been right and something deadly lingered in the shadows beneath those trees, after all? If that was the case, continuing their journey was risky as well.

To her feet, Biscuit yawned and stretched and closed his eyes again. His paws twitched in his dreams.

When Cullen had retired to their tent hours ago, she’d promised to follow shortly, and he’d kissed her goodnight and smiled, “Don’t keep up Biscuit too late.”

Since then she’d fed new logs to the fire three times. The Mabari had soon dozed off, woken up to snap at a moth and dozed off again, and she’d watched him and the moths and the flames they circled and sometimes came too close. Sleep omitted her. Again.

Out in the Plains, during those first few uneventful days of their travels, she’d found that for the first time in years, she was able to sleep through the night without the help of potions. Even the pain in the stump of her arm had become less intense. Less angry.

For the first time in years, she’d felt a sense of calm.

Now a mug sat on a rock across her, its contents long gone cold, and she didn’t need to sniff it to know what it contained. Margret, their healer, had left it for her before she too had gone to bed.

“You’ll need it, Your Worship,” she’d said, and maybe she was right. Still, Imira hated the dreams that haunted her as soon as the blood lotus’ effect wore off and the ingredient that would put her into a state of blissful nothingness for a few hours longer… She clenched her fist until she felt her fingernails digging into her palm and her knuckles turned white. No. It was too dangerous. Her body still craved it, demanded it with sweats and shivers, and would know no moderation should she give in to it. At least the unrelenting sickness that had forced them to stay at the Winter Palace longer than they’d originally planned had finally abated for good. Imira doubted she would have the strength to endure it again.

Suddenly, Biscuit’s head perked up. Eyes and ears fixed on the darkness beyond the firelight, he was ready to pounce, muscles twitching underneath his short grey fur. Something was closing in on their camp. Another fox, maybe? Imira had woken to their hoarse yapping only yesterday to find a family playing on the clearing, not far from the tents. An especially cheeky cub had dragged one of their saddlebags away and dropped it before fleeing with the others when Biscuit gave a low warning growl.

He didn’t growl now. Instead, his tail started pounding violently at the forest floor.

_Friendlies,_ Imira thought with some surprise. _Someone came back._

From the shadows, a figure emerged. Imira recognised her before the fire’s gleam illuminated her features. There was only one person in their group that moved with catlike grace like that. Aside from Cullen and herself, she was also the only person Biscuit would greet as overjoyed as he did, his entire body wagging in stroke with his tail.

“Elloris!”

Accompanied by Biscuit happily jumping up and down her legs, the elf made her way towards the fire. Her armour was decorated by leaves and barely dried mud, as if she’d crawled through the underbrush not too long ago.

“You seem relieved,” Elloris noted, unslung the bow from her back and placed it against her backpack on the ground. The quiver at her waist was almost full, Imira saw, so it’d been a peaceful trip. Or maybe she’d already taken the time to refill it?

“I am. I thought you’d…” _Died. Deserted. Driven away._ “Left.”

Elloris picked up the mug and inspected its contents. “Left?” she echoed, giving Imira a curious look. She couldn’t quite tell if it was because of the potion or the question. “Why would I do that?”

There were multiple reasons Imira could think of. Ostwick, for one. Too well did she remember the dislike Elloris had expressed at every opportunity when she’d first been assigned to her. She’d let her. Even though she never shared the truth about what had happened in the Circle Tower’s ruins with anyone else but Mirien and Cullen, others must’ve figured. Rumours spread like wildfire through an army, after all, and if those rumours weren’t so far from the truth… They’d made her serve the woman who could very well be her own demise. What was a little reluctance compared to that?

The ice between them had melted with time, but its coldness sometimes still wafted through their relationship, and since the Winter Palace, Imira felt a chill in every conversation.

“The Inquisition is gone. I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to…join a different cause.”

Elloris poured out the mug onto the forest floor and sat down on the rock. In the firelight, the pale twirls of her vallaslin glowed eerily on her bronze skin. “Because I’m an elf?”

“He says—”

“Countless elves have died fighting for a better world, for their own world,” she interrupted Imira, eyes narrowing, “and victory was never theirs.

“Our days of glory are over, Inquisitor, there’s no use in chasing them. All that’s left for us is to lend our strength to a fight that will preserve us. All of us: elves, humans, dwarves, even Qunari… I left my clan to join the only people in Thedas that came to the same conclusion.

“I will never follow the man who wants to destroy all that we’ve built.”

Silence followed her words, only interrupted by a branch snapping in the fire. Biscuit sat between them, tilted his head and whined until Elloris reached out and scratched his ears.

“I’m sorry,” Imira finally said. “I should never have doubted you.”

“What an honour,” Elloris scoffed. “Even more so since you seem to be the only one who worries about me lately.”

It was an offer to drop the subject, despite the dismissive words, and Imira gladly took her up on it.

“Muriel didn’t write?”

Elloris’ hands froze on Biscuit’s neck. “You know about us?”

“Cullen told me.”

“Ah, great,” Elloris sighed and resumed the petting. “The man’s a gossip, too.”

“Well, they _did_ get stuck on a bog island for a week on a training mission once because flooding had cut off their return path. Apparently contemplating your life choices while watching the undead stumble about gets boring after a little while.”

He’d returned from that expedition with a collection of swamp flowers he’d carved out of driftwood and an entire week’s worth of complaints about the various aspects of bog life. That had been before Ostwick. Afterwards, training missions had been a small concern, both of his and the Inquisition in general.

“Weren’t they looking for some recruit who ran off?” Elloris mused.

“Yes, and then it turned out said recruit had found some villager’s booze stash in an abandoned hut and had a little too much. When he returned to camp, he was a little surprised to find them in a tizzy, and both Muriel and Cullen missing.”

“Oh, I remember that! Commander must’ve been furious.”

Imira chuckled. Over the years, he had built up a reputation of having little to no patience for the antics of his soldiers. “Believe it or not, but Muriel even more so. She came up with such creative ways to punish the lad, Cullen offered her to exert it, but she refused. Did she never tell you that?”

“No, not really,” Elloris shrugged. “We left that incident at ‘I’m sick of bogs.’”

“Fair enough. Don’t worry, though, she’ll write. Skyhold is probably just fortress-sized chaos at the moment.”

“Chaos you could solve. Instead we’re sitting in a forest in the middle of nowhere.”

Elloris had a point. There was a decision to be made, and now was the time.

“You’ve been to the village?”

“Yes,” nodded Elloris, giving Biscuit one last pat on the head before she pulled her backpack closer and started rummaging through it. Finding what she was looking for proved a surprisingly difficult task. Not only was she carrying a vast array of traps and potions she carefully laid out to her feet almost as if she was taking inventory, her efforts were also hindered by an excited dog’s nose. Finally, she produced an apple from the depths of the pack and held it out to him. “Want some?”

The Mabari sniffed at it and regarded her with a look of betrayal.

“Well, more for me, then,” she shrugged, taking a bite. “Goes by Lycoris. Some miserable place approximately half a day’s ride away. There’s this strange patch of red flowers surrounding an ash in the woods nearby, almost as if someone planted them there. They seem to regard it as special, too, even have a path leading there, you can’t miss it. Other than that, it’s just another village, and the way was clear from what I can tell.”

Just another village, and by the sound of it, just another forest, too. Even outside the units she’d served with during her time with the Inquisition, Elloris had the reputation of a talented tracker. If she’d didn’t find an enemy lurking in the forest, there was none. That made desertion seem the most likely explanation, and the rumours on the roads unfounded. The woods came alive at night, and sometimes they told tales that scared anxious souls away. Somewhere high up in the trees, an owl hooted.

“And our soldiers?” Imira asked.

“No sign of them while I was there, but that doesn’t mean anything.”

“Maybe they weren’t there.”

Elloris gave her a mocking look. “Maybe they offered the right bribe.”

“You think they’d do that?”

“I didn’t just blindly wander into that village because some merchant said he found Inquisition armour in some ditch. Their tracks all lead towards those flowers, towards Lycoris,” said Elloris. “And they were running.”

Imira didn’t need to ask what from. _Who_ from. Elloris’ gaze, hard and burning, was answer enough. To those soldiers, there’d been one monster lingering in these woods, and it bore her name. Why was she still pursuing them? Shouldn’t she just let them go? Wasn’t it her duty to return to Skyhold as quickly as possible so that the others, who refused to break their word, were freed of their service before they could come to harm?

“Maybe you killed your guard in Ostwick,” Elloris said after a while. “Maybe you didn’t. It doesn’t matter now. The others went to Lycoris, and they still might be there. We should go get them.”

The next morning, they followed up the road to the village. If the muddy trail even deserved the term ‘road’. Scattered cobblestones were reminders of better times, when trade had still flowed through this route, but time had gnawed on them and the dirt threatened to swallow their remains. It was slow going. Cart tracks had turned into deep furrows, and even though it hadn’t rained these past few days, they still retained water, much to their horses’ dismay.

_Lycoris_ , Imira thought when the trees finally loosened their grip on the road enough to allow for the first hesitant patches of grass and wildflowers that might’ve passed for fields if someone had bothered to take care of them, and a glimpse of the settlement sprawled ahead. _Leave it to the Orlesians to find flowery names for even the most trivial places._

In the warm glow of the afternoon sun, the village looked almost deserted. Only a few plumes of smoke lazily lolling in the sky above some huts indicated they were inhabited at all. It was the perfect place to disappear.

Their first impression proved only partly correct. The trodden in paths between the houses weren’t nearly as empty as they’d looked from afar, and as they headed for the village square, they acquired an escort of excited children happily trailing after them. Their parents were less excited, it quickly turned out.

“You!”

An angry cry broke the silence that had settled over the square when they’d dismounted and hitched their horses in front of the tavern. From one of the nearby buildings, a man clad in a blacksmith’s apron stormed towards them, pointing at Elloris.

Imira sighed. Of course, _nothing_ could ever go smoothly.

“What did you do now?” she asked in a low voice, but the man reached them before the elf could answer and now loomed over them, arms akimbo. His face had taken on a dangerous shade of red. 

“You!” he bellowed, and every word was accompanied by a spray Imira rather didn’t want to think about. “We told you not to return, and now you bring more of your kind?”

Imira tried to discreetly wipe his spittle from her face and put on a disarming smile.

“My apologies, ser,” she beamed and watched her words punch the air out of his lungs more effectively than her fists would ever have managed. _Ser_ was an honorific reserved for knights in both Ferelden and Orlais, and for a man like him, being addressed as such was about as likely as suddenly being crowned emperor. Especially by someone like her. She’d seen how the villagers had stepped aside as she’d ridden past them, how they’d lowered their gaze when she’d looked their way, and she knew: even after days of travel, even tired, her clothes and her bearing still screamed of wealth and status. And she’d just referred to him as a peer.

It could go one way or the other.

She kept smiling. “I’m sure the lieutenant here had a reason.”

“I did,” Elloris remarked, her voice bored, “one of these idiots tried to lift my purse, so I used a little force.”

It went the other.

“A little?” Another shower of spit went down over Imira and Elloris. “You broke my son’s arm!”

Elloris shrugged. “Well, maybe it was a little too much.”

If Imira ever had doubts that the elf knew her way around a fight, they were laid to rest now. His fists moved surprisingly fast for a man his size, but Elloris moved faster, ducking and dancing out of the way to leave him pounding at the air.

“Savage…knife…ear,” he grunted between strikes, growing even more frustrated each time he didn’t land a hit. To Imira’s relief, Elloris merely resigned herself to dodging his attacks. But even so, the situation would quickly spiral out of control. One hit would land, or Elloris would lose her patience, or Cullen and the other soldiers who’d already went into the tavern would become aware of the trouble outside, and she could imagine their reactions.

He had to be stopped.

Imira reached down and outwards into the Fade. It came willingly to her, pooled around her fingers and finally curled into a ball in her palm. That had been the easy part. Bending large amounts of energy to her will had never been a problem for her. Getting hold of a single current and releasing the rest of them proved trickier. She didn’t want to kill the man. Slowing him was all that was needed. In moments like these, she wished she still used a staff. It had made maintaining her focus considerably easier, and maybe she would’ve already managed to channel a small portion of the magic at her fingertips into the spell.

Just as the ball broke into countless smaller ones, ready to use, an angry voice cried out over the square: “Per!”

It could’ve very well been the voice of a giant, judging by its effect, although the woman exiting the tavern, followed by Cullen and his soldiers, was anything but that. She looked like she was well into her seventies. Even though she’d never been tall to begin with and age had shrunken her further, every inch of her small frame grew with a cold, controlled anger that stood in odd contrast to the lines on her face that were those of a person who enjoyed life, and laughter. In a way, she reminded Imira of Senior Enchanter Rionach. Rionach had been a quiet woman who’d already been old when most of the other Enchanters had joined and had mostly stayed out of Circle life and politics, but when she spoke, they’d listened.

Now the man, Per, listened as well.

“Aïeule,” he said, surprised, his fists frozen in the air. A vein still pulsated on his temple, but his slowly falling shoulders told Imira most of his rage was gone. He exhaled. Elloris shifted back into her normal, relaxed stance, and Imira noted with a slight hint of jealousy she wasn’t even out of breath.

“What are you doing? Where are your manners? Is that any way to treat a guest?”

“No, aïeule.”

Per was almost twice the height of the woman, but next to her, his head hanging low in shame and deference, she seemed to tower over him.

_Aïeule_ , Imira thought, trying to remember what little Orlesian she’d retained from the lessons she used to have as a child, like most nobility did, and skipped whenever possible. _Grandmother. Foremother._ There was no doubt that woman held the power in this village.

“‘No’? Is that all you have to say? Not a single word of apology to the ladies you attacked?”

The vein on his temple pulsated harder again, and he pushed his chin forward like a stubborn child.

“That knife— _elf_ ,” Per corrected himself, putting as much disdain as he dared to into the word, “broke Fabien’s arm. He can’t work the forge like this. Savages like _her_ don’t deserve apologies.”

Aïeule’s glare got even colder.

“If I recall correctly,” she said pointedly, “Fabien tried to steal from her, and she defended herself, as is her right. And yet here you are, insulting our guests. Who are, incidentally, more than willing to forgive your rudeness, no?”

The last bit was directed at Imira, who raised an eyebrow. The old woman’s mouth twitched in a complacent smile. In a matter of seconds, this conflict had become hers to steer, and Imira couldn’t help but be impressed.

“Of course,” she smiled, playing along. “The lieutenant will apologise for the excessive use of force. As for your son, our healer will see to him. He’ll likely not be able to help with your forge any time soon, but at least his bones will set correctly.”

Elloris sighed, but at Imira’s prompting look she straightened and held out a hand. “I’m sorry for injuring your son,” she said, and it sounded almost sincere.

There was a moment of tense silence. Then, Per accepted the hand and shook.

“I apologise for attacking you.”

He returned to his forge as soon as he could, accompanied by their healer, and left Imira standing with Aïeule and the others. Rubbing her hands together, the old woman beamed, an expression much more fitting to the lines deepening the corners of her eyes and mouth, the wrinkles on her cheek.

“Right, to the matter at hand. From what little your husband told me before this…unpleasantness started I understand you’re not here to admire the views? Oh,” she interrupted herself, “I forget myself. My name is Sévérine, even though almost everyone thinks I’m just an old woman these days.”

“Imira,” Imira said simply, and Sévérine laughed.

“I _am_ an old woman, but not so old that my eyes have given up on me. You’re the Inquisitor, no?”

Her denial was prompt. Behind Sévérine, Cullen wordlessly shook his head, a silent ‘don’t’. It came too late.

“Now, now, such vehemence, _Your Worship_ ,” chuckled the old woman. “Still, we can’t change what the Maker made us. Or where he leads us.”

Imira sighed. A year ago, she would’ve agreed, but now the mere thought of it tired her. She’d been told the Maker directed her steps for as long as she could remember, and it had offered an explanation for everything that had happened: her magic, the Circle, the Conclave. The Breach. He’d seen her mistakes, and reminded her of them, and she’d tried to make up for them, time and again. She’d done her best, and it hadn’t been enough. The horrors had never ended. Finally, she’d grown weary of the constant reminders, the punishment. Maybe Varric had it right and it was the Chantry’s doctrine she’d believed in, not the Maker. Maybe Cullen had it right and she just saw it the wrong way around. Maybe Solas was right and there was no Maker at all. Whatever the truth, the decisions that led her to this point, into this village, had been her own.

“We’re looking for our missing soldiers,” she skipped straight to the point. “We know two of them didn’t intend to come back, but we can’t say the same of the others. Maybe you’ve seen them, or heard of someone who did.”

“You sent them into these woods, haven’t you?” Sévérine regarded her curiously. “They won’t come back. And you won’t find them.”

Imira frowned. “How do you know that?”

“You heard the rumours, no? We used to get a fair share of travellers here, traders and scholars, to see the spider lilies.”

“Lycoris.” The realisation had slipped out of Imira’s mouth before she could help it, earning her an appreciative nod.

“You know your flowers,” said Sévérine. “Indeed, the village is named for them. In Orlais, they’re only grown in gardens, imported from Seheron and even further away. Except here. There’s a patch of wild lilies in the woods, and it’s been there for as long as anyone can remember. It helped us make a living. But then the scholars stopped returning. The traders stopped coming. People disappeared, like your soldiers. Our healer was the first.”

“Still,” Imira insisted. “Someone must have gone looking for them. Didn’t you want to find out what happened to your healer? People don’t just vanish. There must’ve been traces. Bodies.”

The old woman’s gaze had a steely quality to it when she said, “No. There was nothing. We asked the tree, but it hasn’t answered in decades. We can’t help you in your search.”

“Asked the tree,” repeated Imira, slowly, not sure if she’d heard right. There were countless strange things in Thedas, and stranger people, stranger places, infused by magic, leaving ripples in the Fade. But Sévérine hadn’t looked like one. The village hadn’t _felt_ like one.

“There’s an ash just north of here, by the lilies. Legend has it that it answers your questions. My grandmother said it once gave her gardening advice. You’re not going to harm it, are you?”

Imira didn’t know what to say. It was a peculiar story, and a peculiar request. Why would she want to harm a tree? She didn’t exactly look like a woodcutter, and with only one arm, she couldn’t even swing her sword, much less an axe. Something didn’t add up, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. Next to her, Elloris repeatedly shifted her weight from one leg to the other, as if something the woman said had made her uncomfortable.

“In any case,” Sévérine went on, smiling again, “it’s too late for you to move on today. We have enough room for you at the inn, food, drink, a proper bed.” She paused for a heartbeat, looking her up and down. “A bath.”

Cullen winked at her.

Even though Imira felt disappointed they still weren’t any closer to finding their soldiers, it was too good an offer to turn down. They agreed to stay the night and maybe the next day, following a good rest with a solid roof over their heads, they’d finally find the lead they were hoping for. 

“A talking tree,” Cullen snorted as soon as Sévérine was safely out of earshot. “Maker, did someone misspell ‘liquorice’ when naming this place?”

Elloris regarded him with a withering look.

“The Dalish know of trees like this. We call them sylvans,” she said, her thumb playing with the handle of her dagger on her hip. “They’re demons who possessed a tree instead of an animal, or a person, and they’re vicious bastards. Usually they don’t talk, but it’s not unheard of. If what the old woman said is true, the others are gone.

“And her ashen pet demon is responsible.”


	4. Fleeting

She burned.

It’d been a summer day like any other, a routine morning, a routine midday, a routine afternoon. Wake up at dawn, feed the chickens, collect their eggs, tend to the garden. Breakfast, tea. Plant a new batch of embrium. Wander through the birchwood, take the eggs to the village. Bring more potions for young Per, as the boy’s cough still lingered. Trade. Return. Feed the chickens.

It’d been a summer day like any other.

Almost.

She’d woken up to find something—a fox, maybe—had stolen most of her chickens, and left the rest ruffled and distraught, gasping for air in panic when she entered their pen. Some of the embrium she’d planted had begun to show brown spots on its leaves, and she knew it would die.

It was a disease of some kind.

She’d seen it before.

The village had been unusually quiet, and when she’d knocked at the blacksmith’s door, they’d ushered her out, even though she could hear Per coughing inside. From the inn, Sévérine had watched her with a strange hungry look on her face, turning around as soon as she noticed, her auburn hair trailing behind.

She’d returned to her hut.

Fed the chickens.

Watched the birches’ shadows grow longer and longer on the clearing. Watched them deepen and twirl, gaining substance. A pale forest of darkness.

A whisper in the night, a horse whinnying nervously. An awakening, sudden and violent. A realisation, prompt and way too late.

Air.

There was none. Her lungs screamed and burned as they filled with the blackness that clouded her vision. In, out. In, out. Breathless. Numb fingers, light head. Her thoughts were separate, broken words.

Out. Out.

She couldn’t find the door.

The coolness of the floor pressed against her cheek. Breathe, breathe. The gasps of the suffocating. She reached down and outwards, pulling, straining, failing. Cries in the dark, echoing in between. Fear came to hold her hand.

Cracking, roaring overhead.

Heat.

A fox had stolen her chickens. She tried to picture the birches. It’d been a summer day like any other.

She burned.


	5. The Birches

Even though the ground soon dried and hardened and the prints became nothing more than a wisp of a boot’s impact on trampled soil, the trail was easy enough to follow. It looked like a bull had barrelled through the forest.

If the bull had been chased by a gust of wind.

Hubert soon gave up on looking for other tracks than his comrade’s, knowing he wouldn’t find any. He debated whether the _thing_ could fly, but quickly dismissed the notion. The arrow had been stuck in that tree at chest-height, and which flying thing big enough to scare the man would descend that low, risking getting trapped on a stray branch? Especially since the lack of traces clearly indicated it hadn’t landed.

Hubert quickly took to calling it ‘the thing’ in his mind. It was easier to grasp than ‘nothing’, even though that explanation seemed more and more likely the deeper he followed the trail into the woods, and it kept him alert. Gave him a reason to keep the throwing knives in his hand.

After a while, the breach in the underbrush narrowed. His comrade had slowed, Hubert concluded, out of breath maybe. He hadn’t stopped moving, however. He’d kept heading into the same direction, away from the _thing_. Away from his bow. That was curious, Hubert found. If he’d stopped running, he must’ve had a moment to gather his bearings. Take stock. Breathe. Make a conscious decision about how to proceed.

He’d been experienced. His panic wouldn’t have lasted indefinitely.

Why hadn’t he returned for his weapon?

The path Hubert followed began to wind and finally joined an animal trail. Going was easier now that the bushes reaching out to cling to his boots and trousers were replaced by batches of nettles. In moments like these, he was thankful for his armour. It was heavier than what he preferred, and it had taken a while and numerous attempts to figure out the right padding so that the plates stopped clanging against each other and his surroundings when sneaking up onto his enemy. Whoever had initially issued the Inquisition scouts their armour didn’t seem to know much about what scouts actually _did_. On the other hand, they would’ve made poor scouts if they couldn’t make do with what they were handed.

Over time, Hubert had come to appreciate the extra protection both chest and back plate offered. On rainy or at least cloudy days, that was. In the simmering heat of the Plains, with no shade for miles, he’d still felt more than a piece of meat slowly roasting away than a soldier and had wished nothing more than to be back in the gear made out of cloth and boiled leather he’d used during his smuggler days. Cloth had one major drawback, however: it didn’t take kindly to wilderness. Especially when it was cheap.

He hadn’t been a very successful smuggler. His gear had always been tears and patches.

The nettles patting his leg guards were his companions for the next hour. Occasionally, Hubert would wonder if he was still on the right trail, if he’d overlooked a squashed bush, a broken low-hanging branch, ruffled leaves, but then he would find another print, and his doubts would vanish.

He still didn’t quite understand the plan his comrade had been following. Had this been his way to cover his tracks? If so, he’d done a poor job. Even the green boys would’ve done better. Had this been a detour, then? Had he been hoping for the animal trail to cross a road that would take him to a settlement?

Assuming he even had a plan. Maybe he had just been lost.

Why hadn’t he retraced his steps?

Why hadn’t he gone back to confront the thing?

_Why hadn’t he returned for his weapon?_

The forest grew brighter. What had started as a birch here and there, occasional dots between the oaks, beeches and elms, had slowly faded into a birchwood. He found himself standing between rows of white trunks, their leaves gently whispering in a light breeze. The animal trail got lost between blades of grass nudging at his boots.

Silvery spots indicated the path Hubert’s comrade had taken. That was curious, too. He’d been missing for almost a week, and there’d been no sign he’d camped somewhere along the way. There’d been no need, either. From what he could tell from the sunlight the canopy allowed for, Hubert had left the camp half a day ago, at most. No matter how he looked at it, the tracks should’ve long been covered by the grass again.

Unless they were recent, after all. Unless he’d indeed missed a deviation from the trail, and only by pure chance had he found it again.

It seemed unlikely.

As unlikely as a _thing_ lingering in these woods.

His time with the Inquisition had taught Hubert that just about anything was possible. He’d seen demons materialise out of thin air. He’d seen a young woman with flaming red hair follow them, the Mark on her hand lashing out as angrily as the lightning she cast with her other one. He’d seen the same woman take on a darkspawn magister, unflinching with dragons battling overhead.

He’d seen the world torn apart and healed, and yet, he’d never doubted that most times, life was far more mundane than that. People were.

The others had been right.

Sighing, he stowed away his knives. His comrade had been with the Inquisition for at least as long as Hubert had been. He knew how they worked, how they thought. He knew they would come after him, so he’d staged his own flight hoping they’d focus on what looked like an immediate threat, buying him more time to get away. He’d then planned to stay in these woods, out of sight, until they moved on.

It had worked splendidly. Hubert assumed the other two had found the bow and the arrow, and decided the mission wasn’t worth it. Loyalty came with conditions, for most.

Leaves rustled and as the noise was too loud, too irregular to have been the wind, he turned to see what had caused it. He had a certain idea.

The emptiness between the birches was almost taunting. Hubert sighed again.

“You can come out now,” he called out, his voice echoing faintly amongst the trees. “I won’t harm you. I’m under no orders to detain you.”

Something was off about the sounds. The forest was supposed to muffle them, not… _amplify_ them. The warning cry of a blackbird tearing through the silence was supposed to die away, not bounce back and forth in the trees and grow hollow as if it was trapped inside a cave.

“I just want to know why.”

His words were whispered back to him a thousandfold.

A dense mist rose where seconds ago the sunlight had cast bright spots onto the forest ground. The air felt heavy, sticking to his face like a wet towel. Were the birches moving, closing in? He couldn’t tell. Through the fog, the black spots on their bark seemed almost alive, countless eyes on pale dead faces, darting from left to right, rolling, _seeing_. 

Staggered, Hubert took a step back. His boot sank into something soft and squishy and got caught by solid ground. A solid object. A root, he told himself, a weirdly shaped rock. Another lost bow.

_Maker, let it be another bow._

If he didn’t look, he wouldn’t have to find out. It would be whatever he wanted it to be and he could move on, forget about it. Return to their camp and continue their mission. The boot came loose with a sickening wet squelch.

He looked.

Leg plates like his own, askew. Gloved hands resting on broken chainmail, fingers twisted and still, blinding the flaming eye. Padded chest plates dangling limply from torn straps.

Insects hastily scurried away from where his boot had been. As a child, Hubert had once dug up sprouting potatoes in his parents’ garden, fascinated by their skin giving in to his squeezing fingers, tearing and smearing their contents over his hands. He’d tread on a leg, a thigh, still covered by leather, its flatness nauseating. He saw, he knew, and yet all that he could think about were those potatoes all those years ago.

It was how they grew, his father had explained, one sacrifice for a dozen more.

It was how the birches grew.

His comrade sat upright against a trunk, an infinite rest. The armour held him together, a husk filled by countless legs crawling over his flesh, countless mandibles feasting. A shiny black bug dragged itself out of his half-opened mouth, lost its balance and fell. It landed on its back, its legs desperately flailing about as ants gathered around it, testing its weight. Another course had just been added to their meal.

His eyes were long gone. Deep in their sockets, something wriggled and squirmed, struggling against dried discoloured skin. It burst through in a spray of clotted black blood and dissolving brain matter. Centipedes poured down his cheeks, clicking and clacking onto the chainmail, hastily scuttling away.

They were fleeing.

A shiver ran through the man’s body. Overhead, the leaves rustled and sighed and whispered, _Why? Why?_

Beneath the armour, his flesh pulsated and bulged in different places, as if something from the inside tried to break out.

The birches.

Groaning metal, splintering bones. Branches breaking through skin, blood-splattered leaves unfolding in fast motion. Wood creaking, struggling. Arched back, violently twitching fingers. Impossible, inhuman screams, wordless, verbose.

One word. One scream.

“Why?”

Hubert ran.

He ran, stumbled, fell, crawled on his hands and knees and picked himself up again, a headless dash through the forest. _Away._ He ran until his lungs were burning, until his vision blurred, and his aching legs gave out under him. The birches stretched endlessly and watched his flight with millions of unblinking eyes. He couldn’t go on, no, he couldn’t stop, he had to get away, he had to keep—

He fell to his knees in front of an ash, in a sea of blood.

_Breathe_ , Hubert reminded himself, inhaling, exhaling, inhaling. Each breath that left his chest took a small part of the fear clouding his mind with it. _Think._

Getting back onto his feet, he took in his surroundings. What he’d assumed to be blood in his haze were bright red flowers he’d never seen before. They formed a circle around the gnarly trunk of an ash that seemed to watch over them, covering the forest floor entirely.

_See? It’s just flowers. It’s safe._

The air smelt different here, fresher, sweeter, familiar. It smelt like the little cakes the innkeeper used to bake, the ones Hubert stole to share them with the cobbler’s son. It tasted like him, lips encrusted with sugar, his hands sticky from the glazing, losing themselves to sweet happiness up in the barn. He could almost see him again, leaning against the ash with his messy hair and his perfect smile, could hear his voice.

“Hubert,” he chuckled. “Are you in trouble again?”

It couldn’t be. Those smells, those tastes, those pictures were long gone, and so was the cobbler’s son. All that was left of him were memories and dreams. Illusions, born of longing. Only the ash and the flowers were real.

And the voice. It came from above, where the leaves played in the wind.

“Go,” the ash whispered. “Flee.”

It couldn’t be, either. Of course, he heard stories. A passing trader here, a Dalish storyteller there, sharing their tales over an ale or two. Always had they boasted they’d seen fantastical things, always had their tellings become unbelievable as their tab grew. Talking trees made for great entertainment on a night out, but they didn’t exist.

They shouldn’t exist.

“What are you?”

Yet here he was, demanding answers from one. Had he gone mad?

Overhead, the rustling intensified. “I grow… I make… A warning.”

_A warning?_

The tree had answered. Madness it was, then, Hubert decided, feeling strangely relieved at the prospect. People snapped all the time, why should he be different? Maybe his comrade’s corpse, _another_ comrade’s corpse, had been the last straw. He’d seen things. He’d been to—

_A warning._

He had to get back to the others. The Inquisitor had to know of the terror that lurked inside these woods. Imagined or real, that was for her to decide. At least for the moment, away from the birches, he was safe.

He wasn’t.

Someone watched him.

Some _thing_.

Wood creaked in muffled protest as Hubert turned around. His eyes went wide, and he felt his hands sliding off leather as he fumbled uselessly at the pockets on his belt.

“Oh,” he made, realising.

_Oh._

**Author's Note:**

> Insomnia is a frustrating affair, but from time to time it bears fruit. Usually, they're only random thoughts, random ideas, random enthusiastic notes like "possessed trees!" and "WOOD NOISES", but collect enough of them, glue them together and maybe something will come of it. This is the result.  
> It's shaping up to be much longer than I'd originally planned, after typing the beginning into my phone at 2.30am, or drunkenly adding "flowers on a bow" at 5.17am, so I divided it into chapters which I hope I'll update faster than "All Things Desolate". Which is likely. The notes for this one are piling up on my desk, and it gets slowly but surely annoying to sort them, whereas the notes for the other one are far and between.  
> Until then, I hope the dear neighbourhood fox respects my desire for sleep more often than now and just keeps it down a little bit.


End file.
